Media Archives — Page 88 of 121 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The new privacy

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June 25, 2008

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION It’s shocking how quickly we’ve all gotten used to the idea that the government can and will listen in on everything we say on our telephones, as well as everything we do on the Internet. Case in point: the FISA Amendments Act passed in the House last week, and is predicted to pass the Senate this week. This is a bill that grants telecoms retroactive immunity for illegally giving the National Security Agency access to the phone calls and Internet activities of millions of US citizens. What this bill ultimately does, aside from not holding companies accountable to the Constitution, is open the door for future mass infractions.

We’re looking down a fiber-optic cable that leads to a future where US spies can snarf up everybody’s data without warrants, combing through it for potential suspects in an ongoing digital witch hunt for terrorists or other "bad guys." I’m not saying anything new here. This is just a quick recap of every progressive futurist’s nightmare: it’s an Orwellian world where nothing you do goes unseen.

My hope is that this absurd bill won’t pass the Senate. But if it does, at least we can hope it will be somehow held in check by other laws to come, and by constitutional challenges. But I still think it’s time that we kiss our old-fashioned notions of privacy goodbye.

And not because we will all reveal our secrets and therefore be equally naked, as "transparent society" shill David Brin has argued. We never will be equally naked. There will always be governments and wealthy entities that have the means to cover their tracks and hide their transgressions. I think we must shed the idea that somehow we can protect the rights of ordinary people by protecting what we in the United States once called privacy.

The notion that we should each be granted a special sphere where everything we do goes unseen, unremarked, and unrecorded is a relatively new notion in itself, something that could hardly have existed in a small-town society where everybody knew everybody else’s business. And it still hardly exists in many high-density countries like Japan and China, where privacy is not as prized as other rights are.

What we ask for when we ask for privacy in the United States is a simply a space (physical or digital) to do legal things without fear of reprisals. Even when we had a more tightly-wrapped notion of privacy, say, 50 years ago, it was hardly perfect. Secrets leaked; spies spied. But there were no 24-hour videocam logs and detailed records of your every correspondence available and searchable online. You could write love letters to your secret admirer, ask her to burn them, and be sure nobody would ever know about your forbidden love.

If those letters were intercepted in a small community, your infamy would live forever. Not so in the digital age, when there’s so much readily available infamy that nobody could be bothered to remember your indiscretions for more than a few seconds. What I’m trying to say is that we will never have the old privacy of the burned letter again.

Instead we will have the new privacy, where what we do can be seen by anyone, but will mostly be hidden by crowds. The problem is that we still lose the old privacy forever. My secret transgressions may be drowned out by multitudes, but anyone who is determined to spy on my most private life will probably be able to do so — without a warrant.

So what do we do? Develop new standards of propriety, becoming as formal and controlled behind closed doors as we are in public? I think that will have happen in some cases. And in most cases, people will rely on crowds to hide them, hoping they never fall under sustained scrutiny. The more noise all of us make, the more we can help to hide the innocent. There will be a kind of privacy in the crowd.

But there will also be a private class of people who never have to rely on crowds. To return to my earlier point, I don’t buy for a minute the idea that at some point everyone — including the rich and politically connected — will be subjected to the same scrutiny as those people whose phone records were illegally handed over the to NSA by AT&T. The powerful will continue to have old-fashioned privacy, while the rest of us must get used to living without it.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who tried to hide behind a crowd once but they dispersed.

Where there’s Will …

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June 25, 2008

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER The cormorants know, the red-winged blackbirds have heard, and the quail would wail: the Marin Headlands and surrounding environs are imbued with more than a little magic. You don’t need to spend much time there to know this, rolling through pebbly Rodeo Beach or tromping down Tennessee Valley Road, soaking up the sagey scents and painting the digits dark red with crushed blackberries, as little girls wander by talking on seagull-feather faux cellies.

They will testify, as will Will Oldham — a.k.a. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, a.k.a. ace Palace Brother, singer-songwriter, and star of Old Joy (2006) and Matewan (1987) — to the area’s healing properties and the way its fresh breezes, rippled clouds, and hills in every hue of green ignite the imagination. After all, until recently Oldham was squirreled away at the Headlands Center for the Arts as an artist in residence. In one of the few interviews he’s consented to lately, Oldham told me he ended up doing much songwriting, including a commissioned piece with his Superwolf partner Matt Sweeney intended for a new Wim Wenders film.

"I felt super-fortunate," said the jovial, easygoing Oldham from Louisville, Ky., where he’d driven to from the Bay Area only three days previous. No matter that tornado warnings were all over the local media as he cast his mind back. "It was kind of a dream situation, because out there in the Headlands, there’s no cell phone reception. And once you cross through that tunnel, you’re in something you can imagine as wilderness and by the sea, and there’s a fair amount of wildlife — snakes and skunks and turkeys and deer and coyotes and bobcats and seals, which, if you choose to, you can see more of than you see any human being on any given day."

He’ll be back in the Bay after touring Europe and playing a handful of US dates, ending in San Francisco. The occasion is Lie Down in the Light (Drag City), Oldham’s worthy, rootsier follow-up to the transcendent The Letting Go (Drag City, 2006). If the latter is colored by the otherworldly ambience of its Icelandic origins, then the new album is touched by the tender humidity of its Tennessee recording site, encompassing, according to Oldham, "a couple songs that sort of address — using terms of love, devotion, and even lust — songs themselves."

"I think," he offered, "at the end of the day, sometimes it can be the truest form of comfort, especially if you’re a singer. You can find in music just about any ideal emotional landscape you crave, whether it’s angst or rebellion or celebration or union or dissolution. It’s all there, and none of it’s going to call you back or text you at four o’clock in the morning or blame you for anything you did or didn’t do or slap you with a paternity suit."

Not that Oldham can speak on paternity suits. "My lawyer says I can’t answer questions like that," he demurred mirthfully. Meanwhile there’s some heavy weather to consider. "I do have a cellar," he said, not worried at all. "But I’m not the hiding kind. I want to see it if it comes. I think I can run faster than a tornado." *

KICKING, LICKING, GOOD

LOWER CLASS REVOLT

Kicking it blue-collar style, the comp celebration includes Rademacher, Tigers Can Bite You, and Light FM. Wed/25, 10 p.m., $4. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com

JONAS REINHART

Kicking it Krautrock, the Citay collaborator’s Kranky release promises near-exotica grooves. Wed/25, 9:30 p.m., $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

DILATED PEOPLES

Kicking it old-school, the Los Angeles underground hip-hoppers unleash The Release Party DVD in July. Thurs/26, 9 p.m. doors, $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

GRAND ARCHIVES

Kicking it Vivaldi styley, if the composer wore Converse. The ethereal Sub Pop indie-rockers get with their folk label mate Sera Cahoone. Sat/28, 9 p.m., $13. Slim’s, 333 11th., SF. www.slims-sf.com

MUTE SOCIALITE

Kicking it free-noise mode — with such Oakland exploratory musical surgeons as Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, and Liz Allbee. Sun/29, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

ALL THAT GLITTERS: LADY GAGA

It takes a lot of g-g-guts to name your act after the Queen tune "Radio Gaga," ‘fess up to the fact that you attended Catholic school alongside Nicky Hilton, and make it your personal mission to make pop cool once more. Lady Gaga, 22, has the moxie to undertake all of the above, having gone from setting hairspray afire on fringy NYC stages and attending Tisch School of the Arts at NYU to hammering out songs for Britney Spears, and making her own brazen dance-pop à la "Beautiful Dirty Rich." Why did she name her debut, The Fame (Streamline/Interscope)? "The concept is that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you have, as long as you can embody a sense of inner fame and value of your own ideas, you can really be whoever you want," Lady Gaga opined huskily on her way to a Raging Waters gig in San Dimas. "I was nobody, and I’ve been jerking people for years into thinking I’m somebody I’m not. I used to get into clubs like when I was 16. I’d usually just walk right in because of the way I carried myself, the way I dressed, the way I spoke to people."

Sat/28, 8 p.m., $45. Temple, 540 Howard, SF; www.templesf.com. Sun/29, 6:10 p.m., Pride Festival, Civic Center, SF; www.sfpride.org

Tim Russert – an alternative view

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June 23, 2008

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I started cringing early on when the floodtide of eulogies came in for Tim Russert. I cringed because NBC and MSNBC forgot about journalism and went instead for self-reverence to the maximum. And I cringed because so many politicians came forward so quickly to praise him so glowingly and NPC was so happy to run them. And I cringed because all of this once again made the point so dramatically about the incestuous relationship between the press and the political establishment inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C.

I liked Tim Russert, NBC’s Meet the Press anchor and Washington bureau chief. I realized that he had taken a moribund television news program and transformed it with his personality and ability into the premiere Washington television news program. And I liked the fact that he volunteered to cover the presidential primaries and provided some zest and insights.

But there were many things I didn’t like about Russert’s approach to journalism, most notably the fact that the Bush administration loudly claimed it used his Sunday morning show as its favorite to promote its war in Iraq and that Russert never properly challenged them. “In reality, Meet the Press was the venue for some of the White House’s most audacious lies about the Iraq War–most of which went unchallenged by Russert,” according to an excellent critique of Russert by the media organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting…

“Recalling such softball questioning, it’s easy to believe the advice that Cheney press aide Cathie Martin says she gave when the Bush administration had to respond to charges that it manipulated pre-Iraq War intelligence: ‘I suggested we put the vice president on Meet the Press, which was the tactic we often used,’ she said (Salon, l/26/07). ‘It’s our best format.'”

Russert also demonstrated the problem with Beltway access. He had access to the politicians and political establishment for his shows but he refused to use his powers of access for critics of the war and people outside the political establishment.
FAIR pointed out that in Bill Moyers’s documentary “Buying the War” (PBS, 4/25/07), Russert said he wished that dissenting sources would have contacted him: “My concern then was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.” Of course, as FAIR noted, “any journalist could have found such sources–and few critics of the war would have passed up an opportunity to air their views on such a prominent media platform.” Why didn’t he have access to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, the authors of Project Censored stories, or the director of Project Censored, the Nation people, Frank Rich at the New York Times, or other major war critics who, among other things, weren’t lying and happened to be proven right on their positions against the war, the occupation, and the surge?

FAIR quoted Russert as saying that the White House claims “were judgments, and there was no way at that time to say, ‘You’re wrong. How could you possibly say that? You’re lying.’ That’s just not the style of Meet the Press, nor I think the style of good journalism, but we now have a permanent record as to the judgments believed by the Bush administration going into the war and you can look at them three years later and decide whether they were correct or not.'”

Well, as FAIR concludes, “there are journalists who examine the claims made by politicians at the time they make them, and some were doing just that with the assertions Bush Administration officials used to justify the invasion of Iraq (Extra!3-4/06). Had a journalist with the prominence of Tim Russert done so, it’s possible that the debate could have had an entirely different outcome.”

The example I like to use is that the Guardian, and many other alternative newspapers and voices, with no special sources in Washington or Iraq, could figure out that this was the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reasons and opposed it strongly and continuously from the very beginning. Why couldn’t Russert, the White House press corps, and the mainstream media figure this out, the biggest foreign policy blunder in U..S. history?
The coverage of his death gives us a clue. B3

Click here for the FAIR blog, Remembering Russert: What media eulogies remember–and forget.

Click here to read the Orlando Sentinel blog, The Tim Russert coverage: one of the most embarrassing chapters in television journalism.

Budget Battle bumps up against Gay Marriage

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June 18, 2008

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Bridal Money bags are sexy, budget documents ain’t.

As LGBT couples were praising Mayor Gavin Newsom for making legally wedded bliss a reality in their lifetimes, a parallel community inside City Hall was criticizing the Mayor for making potentially fatal cuts to public health programs, many of which have served San Francisco’s LGBT community for decades.

Unfortunately, between all the gay marriage hoopla going on in the marble corridors of City Hall, and the burn out that non-profits are already feeling having suffered crippling mid-year cuts, there was an unprecedented feeling of doom and gloom during this year’s Beilensen Hearing inside the Board of Supervisors’s chambers.

The Beilensen Hearings, which the state requires when cuts are proposed to public health programs and services, have become an annual dance, which goes like this: first the Mayor proposes massive cuts, then the Board tries to restore funds, next competing rallies are held, and finally most of the programs are restored,

Only this year, there is little to no money to be found.

During his June 2 budget annoucement, Mayor Gavin Newsom pointed out that while the City is facing a record $338 million deficit, it is also is seeing healthy increases in tax revenues.

So, why such a massive imbalance this year? Newsom claims we are spending more than we are taking in, but that answer sidesteps the political reality of just why that is happening on such a greater scale, this year.

The answer to that question lies in two directions: Newsom’s approval, and the Board’s largely unflinching support (Sup. Chris Daly was the lone dissenting voice) for union contracts last summer, when the Mayor was up for reelection; and Newsom and the Board’s failure to introduce legislation last year to create new revenue streams to make up for the increasing slice of funds that those same union contracts, predictably, are swallowing up.

To their credit, Board President Aaron Peskin (who celebrated his birthday June 17, just as gay marriage mania was hitting City Hall big time) and Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who chairs the Board’s powerful Budget and Finance Committee, have now bitten the bullet and introduced legislation that seeks to increase property transfer taxes and close the pay roll tax partnership loophole.

But even if these measures are approved, (and that’s a big if, they won’t ease this year’s budget pains.

What could help, on a more immediate level, is the identification of significant savings within the Mayor’s proposed 2008-09 budget. And to that end Budget Committee chair McGoldrick has dug his claws deep into Newsom’s proposed budget document and drawn blood.

This blood letting began ast week, when McGoldrick led the charge against funding the Mayor’s proposed $3 million Community Justice Center. (The proposal got sent back to committee where it will likely fester, and the Mayor has responded by placing a measure on the November ballot that would allocate $1.8 Million in city funds and earmark an additional $984,000 in federal grant money to create the proposed center.)

And at yesterday’s Board meeting, McGoldrick told me that he has identified potential savings of $8-10 million from the San Francisco Police Department, including eliminating over staffing as well as defunding two out of the Mayor’s three proposed police academies.

“Any claims that they are understaffed are not true,” said McGoldrick, who says he came to this conclusion by factoring in 129 civilianized positions into SFPD staffing totals.

“And I’ve already told the Mayor and the Chief of Police that they are not going to get three police academies, and that the Mayor’s 311 Center is not getting 26 new positions,” McGoldrick continued. “We are going to have to figure out a more efficient way to run it. This is all about priorities. My priorities are the sick, the shut-ins, the elderly, children, the mentally ill and the victims of domestic violence.”

Meanwhile, Sup. Chris Daly extracted hollow laughs when he announced that he would not make the exact same speech as he did at last year’s Beilenson Hearing.

Daly was referring to his now infamous speech in which he referred to “allegations of cocaine use,”—allegations that were whispered around town, after it was revealed that Newsom had had an adulterous affair with the wife of his then campaign manager Alex Tourk, but that were never proven and thus would have been better left unmentioned in a public hearing that was seeking to illuminate Newsom’s wacky budget priorities..

But because Daly mentioned them, the media, which doesn’t like covering budget hearings, since there’s nothing sexy about covering hours of testimony in which people describe , over and over, the devastation that proposed cuts will have on their programs, happily refocused its lens on the alleged inappropriateness of Daly’s speech, thereby helping the Mayor get off the hook for proposing cuts to substance abuse treatment programs, in the same year he claimed to be undergoing alcohol abuse therapy.

Or maybe it was because that in this LGBT-friendly town, Newsom will always be remembered as the patron saint of gay marriage, and because of his sainthood voters will largely absolve him of all his other sins, including making decimating financial cuts to public health programs that have helped the LGBT community for decades.

Either way, this time around, Daly, (while complaining that the Beilenson hearing should happen in front of the Mayor), didn’t bother to imply that Newsom had somehow lost his moral compass.

Which was probably a wise l move, given that at that very moment the Mayor was being elevated to international renown for having pushed the gay rights envelope all the way to the wedding altar, at a time when the rest of the Democratic Party, fearing another four years of President Bush in 2004, was whimpering “too much, too soon, too fast.”

Instead, Daly commented that his district will likely look like “the Night of the Living Dead” once Newsom’s proposed budget cuts go into effect,

Daly also introduced the “Treatment on Demand Act,” which “requires that the City and County of San Francisco “maintain an adequate level of free and low cost medical substance abuse services and residential treatment slots commensurate with demand.”

Daly’s act measures demand, “by the total number of filled medical substance abuse slots plus the total number of individuals seeking such slots as well as the total number of filled residential treatment slots plus the number of individuals seeking such slots.”

But for now, it’s budget hearing season, and advocates like Bill Hirsch of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel are telling the Board how they believe the Mayor’s proposed cuts amount to “a dismantling of a system of care that has taken over 25 years to put together.”

“We’re terribly disappointed with the mayor’s Budget,” Hirsch said, against a soundtrack of whoops of joy as gay couples celebrated their weddings outside the Board’s chambers.
“Hopefully, the Board can help prevent the worst of this.”

Others, like Connie Ford of Office Employees Local 3, which represents 800 non-profit workers, called the 22 percent cuts that the Department of Public Health is facing, “the most chaotic, unstrategic and ill-advised cuts” she’d ever seen.
“We’ll hurt people and the cuts will actually cost us more money” Ford said. “There is no rhyme or reason to these cuts.”

FelicianHouston, program director of a Woman’s Place, said that the proposed cuts are a “reflection of the dismantling of the continuum of care.”
“Just don’t do it.” Houston said.

And the list of speakers went on and on, including representatives for suicide prevention, crystal meth intervention, and mobile assistance patrol programs.

“Studies show that for every one dollar spent on substance abuse treatment seven dollars are saved at the law enforcement level” said several speakers. It’s a comment that brings us full circle to the insanity of proposing to start new programs, like the Community Justice Center, while proposing to slash the programs that would serve that center.

Stay tuned for move coverage of this and other budget insanities, between now and the end of July, when the annual budgetary approval cycle is scheduled to be resolved.

Three Internet myths that won’t die

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June 17, 2008

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Since I started writing this column in 1999, I’ve seen a thousand Internet businesses rise and die. I’ve watched the Web go from a medium you access via dial-up to the medium you carry around with you on your mobile. Still, there are three myths about the Internet that refuse to kick the bucket. Let’s hope the micro-generation that comes after the Web 2.0 weenies finally puts these misleading ideas to rest.

Myth: The Internet is free.

This is my favorite Internet myth because it has literally never been true. In the very early days of the Net, the only people who went online were university students or military researchers — students got accounts via the price of tuition; the military personnel got them as part of their jobs. Once the Internet was opened to the public, people could only access it by paying fees to their Internet service providers. And let’s not even get into the facts that you have to buy a computer or pay for time on one.

I think this myth got started because pundits wanted to compare the price of publishing or mailing something on the Internet to the price of doing so using paper or the United States Postal Service. Putting a Web site on the Net is "free" only if you pretend you don’t have to pay your ISP and a Web hosting service to do it. No doubt it is cheaper than printing and distributing a magazine to thousands of people, but it’s not free. Same goes for e-mail. Sure it’s "free" to send an e-mail, but you’re still paying your ISP for Internet access to send that letter.

The poisonous part of this myth is that it sets up the false idea that the Internet removes all barriers to free expression. The Internet removes some barriers, but it erects others. You can get a few free minutes online in your local public library, maybe, and set up a Web site using a free service (if the library’s filtering software allows that). But will you be able to catch anyone’s attention if you publish under those constraints?

Myth: The Internet knows no boundaries.

Despite the Great Firewall of China, an elaborate system of Internet filters that prevent Chinese citizens from accessing Web sites not approved by the government, many people still believe the Internet is a glorious international space that can bring the whole world together. When the government of a country like Pakistan can choose to block YouTube — which it has and does — it’s impossible to say the Internet has no boundaries.

The Internet does have boundaries, and they are often drawn along national lines. Of course, closed cultures are not the only source of these boundaries. Many people living in African and South American nations have little access to the Internet, mostly due to poverty. As long as we continue to behave as if the Internet is completely international, we forget that putting something online does not make it available to the whole world. And we also forget that communications technology alone cannot undo centuries of mistrust between various regions of the world.

Myth: The Internet is full of danger.

Perhaps because the previous two myths are so powerful, many people have come to believe that the Internet is a dangerous place — sort of like the "bad" part of a city, where you’re likely to get mugged or hassled late at night. The so-called dangers of the Internet were highlighted in two recent media frenzies: the MySpace child-predator bust, in which Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen discovered that a registered sex offender was actively befriending and trolling MySpace for kids; and the harassment of Web pundit Kathy Sierra by a group of people who posted cruelly Photoshopped pictures of her, called for her death, and posted her home address.

Despite the genuine scariness represented by both these incidents, I would submit they are no less scary than what one could encounter offline in real life. In general, the Internet is a far safer place for kids and vulnerable people than almost anywhere else. As long as you don’t hand out your address to strangers, you’ve got a cushion of anonymity and protection online that you’ll never have in the real world. It’s no surprise that our myths of the Internet overestimate both its ability to bring the world together and to destroy us individually. 2

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who is biased in favor of facts.

Same-Sex Weddings: A Love Story

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June 17, 2008

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Spencer Jones and Tyler Barrick, newly wed, June 17, 2008.

It’s their stories that bring you to tears, stories of love, commitment and a desire to wed that would all be very ordinary, except that these people are entering into state sanctioned same-sex marriages for the very first time. (For many more pictures and stories, visit our Guardian’s SF blog.)

“Amazing” says a youthful Tyler Barrick. “Overwhelming,” says the equally youthful Spencer Jones, as they emerge from the cool marble of San Francisco City Hall into the bright light of noon, June 17, 2008, as husband and husband for the very first time.

“This is our first, and hopefully, only attempt we’re going to make at marriage,” Jones says.

Inside City Hall, an immaculately dressed Paul Stevens and Ron Weaver are preparing to wed for the second time. Their first time occured February 13, 2004, when a newly sworn in Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to conduct same sex marriages at City Hall, stunning an entire nation and delighting its gay and lesbian communities.

Stevens and Weaver meet some of the running dogs of the media, inside City Hall
“We heard about it coming into work and we got married in our work clothes,” Weaver laughs, recalling that first happy wedding day.

In a relationship with Stevens for 17 years, Weaver also recalls becoming really depressed when their first marriage was nullified, on August 12, 2004, six months after their first fantastically spontaneous wedding day.

“I laid around for several days, I felt society had let me down, I took it very personally, I felt I was not good enough in their eyes,” Weaver says.

“I was surprised at my reaction to that first wedding,” Weaver adds. “I felt like a different person, so complete. I didn’t know that would happen , so when it was taken away from me, I felt as if the whole country was against me.”

Sharon Papo and Amber Weiss seal their marriage with a kiss.

Homonuptials: More Day 1 wedding shots

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June 17, 2008

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Guardian photog Ariel Soto got these shots of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin’s wedding at City Hall yesterday, as well as some of the celebratory crowd outside.

The view from City Hall steps

Spiralling toward matrimony

Phyl and Del (in wheelchair) cutting the gorgeous Citizen Cake cake

Joined by the glowing, and glowing-haired, mayor

Ariel says: “From my perch up in the balcony of city hall, looking down at the throngs of media and a beautiful white cake, my heart started beating faster and faster because I was about to witness a true piece of much awaited and much deserved history — the first legal same-sex marriage of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin on June 16th in San Francisco’s City Hall. The couple was greeted with lots of love and joy and loud cheering, along with the huge crowd outside the court house who were also joining in with the festivities, passing out flowers, singing songs and just being darn happy that this day has finally arrived. Congrats Phyllis and Del on your much awaited marriage — and may your love and courage live on forever!”

Well-wishers from above

Dufty to run for mayor?

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June 12, 2008

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Stephen Seewer, the LGBT chair of the Commonwealth Club, called to tip me off to a big story that the media missed: Sup. Bevan Dufty announced on Monday at the Commonwealth Club that he’s running for mayor of San Francisco! Political watchers have long known this was a possibility, but how did we miss such an important announcement?
So I spoke with Dufty, who told me that he is indeed thinking about it, but far from making it official: “I don’t feel like it was a formal announcement.”
Dufty said Seewer caught him off-guard at the event with a question about whether he plans to run for mayor. Dufty says he answered by talking about the ambitious agenda he intends to pursue over the next two years and, as he tells it to us, he then told the audience, “Hopefully, I’ll look like a strong candidate for mayor.”
OK, maybe that’s not quite an official declaration, but it’s no secret that Dufty has his eye on the job. Others who seems to be setting themselves up for a run and have made similar statements of interest include Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, Sup. Aaron Peskin, and District Attorney Kamala Harris (provided she doesn’t get tapped by President Barack Obama to be attorney general). And I wouldn’t be surprised if Senator Carole Migden takes a step back after losing reelection, licks her wounds, and returns to the fray as a mayoral candidate.

Genetically modified mouthpieces

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June 11, 2008

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OPINION In 2003, when I was working as an anchor for a San Francisco television station, newscasters and reporters across the country were asked by the White House to refer to the Iraqi invasion as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). We were asked to call the war in Afghanistan Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

With press releases in hand, journalists repeated genetically modified words as if their DNA depended upon it.

Genetically modified language is when propaganda wins, journalism sells out, and the public loses. It’s when words are twisted and massaged and spun until an entire suit of lies is woven to cover the guilty and cloak the truth.

The genetically modified language, in the case of Iraq, was full of false bravado and moral superiority, wielded in attempts to turn lies into honorable causes our dear children were willing to go to war for.

Nothing caught on like the phrase "the war on terror." It was a White House propaganda bonanza. Whole networks built their news around swirling "war on terror" graphics and anchors began stories with "Today in the war on terror," while most of the world considered Americans the terrorists.

That’s when I pulled up lame and refused to dance the destructive dance. Most of us who complained are now gone.

The fourth estate, as the media is called, was created to watch the government and anyone else using lies to gain power and profit at the expense of the safety and security of the American people

Thinking journalists can now see that using the White House’s genetically modified language with unquestioning devotion is one of the many reasons why we lost the public trust five years ago.

I propose that journalists stop repeating genetically modified White House language, and go a step further.

On the very day it was leaked that Scott McClellan’s book reveals the country went to war based on known lies, the sweetest, shiniest, dimple-faced, airbrushed Bay Area Murdoch girl began a broadcast by announcing: "Another American has given his life for his country today."

I was once that girl. Today I know that soldier was one of thousands who bravely believed in what the president said — and died believing a lie the press helped promote.

What if this anchorwoman — and hundreds of others like her, all of whom I imagine to be nice people — read instead: "Another American has died in Iraq today. He was a beloved brother and child, and he was number 4,084."

Then perhaps follow that with the number of wounded Iraqi veterans: 30,329.

In an attempt at truly unbiased journalism, they could end with the number of Iraqis who have lost their lives: 1,217,892.

If this war, as McClellan says and dozens of other experts have pointed out, was based on a great lie, let’s honor those soldiers who were willing to believe the lie by bringing them home alive. Let’s stop repeating genetically modified words that glorify a conflict American journalists could have helped prevent by putting their pom-poms down.

Leslie Griffith

Leslie Griffith is a writer, award-winning television reporter and former KTVU news anchor. You can find more of her work at lesliegriffith.org.

SF Weekly seeks to delay payment

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June 11, 2008

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The chain that owns SF Weekly, which last year had revenue of at least $159 million and more than $11 million in profit, argued in court June 5 that it’s having trouble raising money for an appeal bond to cover the $15.6 million judgment the Guardian won in its predatory pricing lawsuit.

SF Weekly attorney Rod Kerr asked Judge Marla Miller June 5 to stay the judgment until 10 days after she rules on post-trial motions. That could have delayed the judgment until July 28.

Village Voice Media, which owns the Weekly, needs to post a bond for the full amount of the verdict plus interest — now accruing at more than $4,000 a day — if the chain wants to avoid paying the Guardian during the appeals process.

Kerr argued that turmoil in the financial markets and the need for VVM to get approval from its lenders is making it difficult to secure the bond. "Without the post-trial decisions, they’re not willing to release the collateral," he said in court.

Kerr said he believes there is a likelihood the judgment amount will be substantially lowered during post-trial rulings, something the company has represented to its lenders.

Guardian attorney Ralph Alldredge, speaking to the court by telephone while his co-counsels Richard Hill and Craig Moody were present, reiterated a previous offer to stay enforcement until June 18, which is 30 days after the judgment was entered following the March jury verdict.

But Alldredge said the statements and briefs by the defendants raise serious concerns about whether they’re prepared to cover the full judgment, so the Guardian needs to be able to take steps to ensure that assets are being identified and secured to satisfy the judgment.

"They anticipate post-trial motions will result in a reduction of the verdict, so apparently their lenders have been told that," Alldredge said, adding, "The lenders need to be told the judgment is likely to be the final amount."

Judge Miller agreed with the Guardian position, granting the stay only until June 18, but allowing the defendants to return to court to ask for more time if they can provide evidence showing how it will result in a bond being issued.

"I am concerned there is a risk that the bond may never be issued," Miller said.

A San Francisco jury found that SF Weekly has been engaged in illegal predatory pricing going back to the mid-1990s, selling advertising below the costs needed to support the paper in an effort to drive the Guardian out of business.

Kerr also sought to delay enforcement of an injunction Miller issued that bars further below-cost pricing by SF Weekly, but that portion of the motion was denied.

Both sides are due in court July 8 at 9 a.m. to argue post-trial motions, including one by the defendants to throw out the verdict and order a new trial. (Steven T. Jones)

For more details and key documents, go to sfbg.com/lawsuit

This ain’t the singularity

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June 11, 2008

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION I’m surrounded by people who think the world is changing because Amazon released an e-book reader called the Kindle and because Apple released a new, cheaper iPhone that supposedly will run faster. Really, just search for "3G iPhone" and you’ll see, like, thousands of articles raving about the Second Coming of iPhone. Are these technologies transforming our lives forever, or has the whole idea of world-changing technology finally become nothing more than an advertising jingle?

You can get the answer, in part, from a normally staid engineering journal called IEEE Spectrum. This month Spectrum did a special issue on "the singularity," a term from science fiction that refers to the moment when the technology and culture of the present evolve to the point that they would be incomprehensible to people from the past (www.spectrum.ieee.org/singularity). Airplanes, for example, would be a singularity technology for people from the 1700s. None of the brainiacs and visionaries writing for Spectrum have much to say about e-book readers or mobile phones that play music.

That’s because the Kindle and the iPhone actually represent the death throes of 20th-century technology. They are not changing the world; they are putting a new interface on yesterday’s innovations. When you want to evaluate whether a piece of tech really is "revolutionary," just put it to the simple singularity acid test. Ask yourself if you could explain it in a few sentences to people living 100 years ago. So let’s sit down with your typical resident of San Francisco in 1908, and explain Kindle and iPhone to her.

First the Kindle: "This mechanical instrument allows you to read every book in your library by pressing these levers." Our 1908 San Franciscan may be startled that she can read so many books with one instrument, but does she intuitively get the idea? Yes. Now let’s give her an iPhone. "This artful device is a combination phonograph and telephone that you can slip into the sleeves of your jacket for safekeeping." Again, she’s going to be startled by the size and shape of this artful device, but she’s seen phonographs and she’s used telephones before. Will she go into a state of catatonic future shock? No. She’ll slide that baby up her lacy sleeve and call her friend while shopping for records and mass-produced books on Market Street.

The Kindle and iPhone are the end-state and convergence of technologies developed, for the most part, in the 19th century. The only element inherent in both devices that I think might throw our 1908 woman for a loop is the Internet. One could certainly explain that it is like a giant repository of newspapers, but of course that isn’t quite right. Nor is it shops, or notes and scribbles on walls, or storytelling, or pictures or phone calls. It isn’t even really a convergence of all of those things: it is something genuinely new, socially and technologically.

But adding our era’s one singularity-level technology to 100-year-old technologies does not make more singularity technology. It’s like electrifying a device that was once driven by steam. Upgrades are not the same thing as paradigm shifts.

If you want to know what kinds of technologies really will transform our lives, you need to think about things we take for granted that would be hard to explain to our 1908 person — or indeed, to a 1978 person: Internet technologies. Global positioning system technologies. Space-going technologies. (Though pretty much anybody in 1908 would get the idea of robots on Mars — "mechanical creatures on Mars" sounds like a 19th-century sci-fi novel.) Most of all, look to technologies that are changing social relationships the way the Internet has. Sites like Facebook are literally changing the way we understand friendship. Our culture would be incomprehensible to the people of 1908 just due to the rate at which we exchange knowledge online — passing around the "dramatic lemur" video to millions of people in a day, for example.

Oh, now you want to see it? Search for "dramatic lemur." Try explaining that to our 1908 friend.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who has no interest whatsoever in the iPhone because she’s waiting for her augmented reality lenses with the blink interface.

Tech art 2.0

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June 11, 2008

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW Does anyone still truly abide by the hope that technology is the benevolent force that can deliver a luminous future? Sure, we’ve got biotech, greentech, and Web 2.0 to tackle disease, our environmental sins, social alienation, and economic downturn. But at the same time, who isn’t aware of the corporate capitalist machinery and toxic waste that will accompany the next Apple marvel or Monsanto-engineered miracle crop? Can a Silicon Valley researcher really find a way to reverse global warming?

We all hope for, and perhaps believe in, that miracle cure. It’s a way to generate optimism, however slight. This is the cultural condition that serves as the thematic starting point of "Superlight," the San Jose Museum of Art exhibition component of the second biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, a technology-focused series of live events, most held June 4-8. The show, curated by Steve Dietz, and the festival are rooted historically in what may be called electronic and digital art, but "Superlight" finds thematic inspiration in the more generally pervasive, free-floating anxieties of our greenhouse gas–warmed psychic atmosphere: environmental and economic meltdowns, food shortages, personal disappointments, and the like. Recognizing that most of these conditions are brought about by the same technological advancements that are looked to for ways of stabilizing if not rectifying those conditions, Dietz presents a couple dozen solo and collaborative artists not as saviors, but as people who can "aerate and illuminate" our contemporary concerns.

It’s no accident that the show presents a range of media, not all of it plugged in, and much of it formed with hybridized materials and approaches. If the digital art genre was not so long ago equated with computer screens and chirping electronic soundtracks — don’t worry, you’ll find some of that here, and in Second Life corollaries to some pieces — the atmosphere of the galleries suggests analog objects and psychological positions that aerate some of that virtual space.

It happens in a delightfully literal manner in Taiwanese artist Shih Chieh Huang’s perversely adorable robotic creatures made from plastic bags, water bottles, and electric fans. The sculptures gracefully appear to breathe as the bags fill and evacuate, and they have light components that glow in the heightened colors of late model car dashboards. The vibe is more troubling in psychologically tinted — and somewhat glitchy — interactive works such as Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Global Mind Radar/Reader (an Emotional Barometer), which takes a cultural pulse as a female figure, projected inside a glass dome "blogosphere," goes through a series of emotional gestures responding to live blog input concerning current events. That position is echoed in Bruce Charlesworth’s installation Love Disorder, which is tartly described in exhibition text: "A huge projected video character has ambivalent feelings about you." And he’s not shy about expressing them. These works use anthropomorphism to generate identification with the machinery, though the latter two tout complex, glitch-friendly technology that dare us to believe, or at least question, if they actually work.

Mixed emotions also infuse Daniel Faust’s elegantly composed and slightly wistful color photographs of now-historic Silicon Valley corporate architecture and outmoded data archives, depicting them as stately yet oddly humble. The images are visually skewed toward a modernist history via research facility. That kind of past idealism is perhaps behind the utopian-themed collaborative projects by Free Soil and Red 76, which tap into a pervasive yearning for utopian endeavors, both on earth and Second Life sediment. These works, however, find their most vital components outside the museum — in tours and social gatherings — and their diagrams and historical artifacts are more confusing than illuminating.

More insistent is the video documentation of projects by HeHe (Helen Evans and Hieko Hansen), a pair of Paris designers who harness carbon-filled industrial pollution, second-hand smoke, and various light sources to urge us to look at the world, and the amazing possibilities in available hardware and software, with an uneasy sense of wonder. From a literal standpoint, their pieces fit this exhibition’s premise best: their use of illumination resembles a technologically fortified nature that manages to inspire as it metaphorically sticks our noses in holes in the ozone. If that’s not superlight, what is?

SUPERLIGHT

Through Aug. 30

Tues.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

San Jose Museum of Art

110 S. Market, San Jose

$5–$8, free to members and children under 6

(408) 271-6840, www.sjmusart.org

“You Make Me Make You”

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June 10, 2008

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REVIEW We photograph stuff and immediately pass it on to everyone who has Internet access. We ingest news events recorded only moments ago — and expect information on the next event even before it has completely unfolded. Artist Suzanne Husky is also driven to document what is happening right now: from social concerns to what she witnesses in her community. But she doesn’t give it to us flat, like so much documentation via electronic media. Instead, Husky renders her vision in 3-D and makes them potentially huggable.

In her current show at Triple Base Gallery, Husky has sewn, stuffed, and collaged a miniature wonderland that merges her social network with ecological and pop-cultural concerns. The initial effect of the installation is like seeing a grade-schooler’s attempt to recreate a Christmas window at FAO Schwartz. But these toy-size dioramas were designed for adults to contemplate. That desire to immediately disseminate information, the urge to make real what is only flat onscreen, and seeing the big picture are some of the ideas that come to mind when viewing her work — after you’re done chuckling over details like the composting toilet (Humanure). Husky wants her viewers to become social anthropologists and make their own connections. Using photographs for doll faces so there is no mistaking who is represented, the artist gives us Kobe Bryant dunking a basketball, her friends at a gallery opening, and that ever-present naked guy doing yoga in Berkeley Hot Tub. The herd from the Highway 5 stockyards, Chinese factory workers, and an activist aloft in the University of California, Berkeley oak trees also are reproduced with sad and funny results.

YOU MAKE ME MAKE YOU Through June 29. Artists Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine discuss Husky’s work at a dinner lecture, June 27, 7 p.m.; e-mail triplebase@gmail.com for reservations. Thurs.–Sun., noon–5 p.m. Triple Base, 3041 24th St., SF. (303) 909-5481, www.basebasebase.com

3 Good reasons to hate Meghan McCain’s blog (besides the obvious)

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June 9, 2008

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By Marianne Moore

Meghan McCain, the senator’s young, hot, keffiyeh-wearing daughter, has taken to blogging from the campaign trail, and the media is lapping it up: depending on who you read she’s alternately “hilarious,” “refreshing,” or even “adorable.” Lest you be seduced by the blog’s seemingly innocent, light-hearted descriptions of bad campaign food or the Governator’s neckwear, find below the tools you need to remain ruthlessly scowling at Meggers and her Daddy.

1. Revolting Fake Hipness

In addition to sharing her observations and insights from the road, Meghan also graces us with her iTunes playlists, a sure way to show us that she’s down. The playlists are a truly bizarre mix of predictable indie bands (Architecture in Helsinki, Neutral Milk Hotel, Broken Social Scene: seriously, it’s like she hired a consultant) older artists (David Bowie, Stevie Wonder), shite (Rod Stewart), and music a Republican just has no business listening to (Joni Mitchell, Iggy Pop). Really, she can listen to whatever she wants; I guess what I object to is Meggers turning some of my favorite artists into hollow McCain shills, just like I generally object to the pollution and degradation of things I hold sacred.

According to a hysterically enthusiastic article in Britain’s The Observer, Meghan has single-handedly “reinvented the campaign blog” and “injected [McCain’s] political persona with some much-needed street cred.” Right. Because nothing says street cred like private jets, ditzy gushing over mass murderer Henry Kissinger’s loafers, and “self-deprecating” admissions of Starbucks addiction.

shannon!.jpg
Shannon Bae shows us What Asian People Like: Soda! John McCain!

SF Weekly and VVM having problems paying up

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June 6, 2008

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Questions were raised in court yesterday about the ability of SF Weekly and their parent company, Village Voice Media, to pay the $15.6 million judgment that the Bay Guardian won in its predatory pricing lawsuit against the chain – or even to secure the bond needed to move forward with appeals.
Weekly attorney Rod Kerr argued the defendant’s motion for a stay of the judgment until 10 days after Judge Marla Miller rules on post-trial motions. Those motions are scheduled to be heard on July 8 and the judge has 10 days to rule, meaning the enforcement of the judgment could have been delayed until July 28.
Kerr argued that turmoil in the financial markets and the need for VVM to get approval from its lenders is making it difficult to secure the bond. “Without the post trial decisions, they’re not willing to release the collateral,” he said in court. “I think it’s a very reasonable request under the circumstances.”
Kerr said he believed there was a likelihood that the judgment amount would be substantially lowered during post-trial rulings, something that the company has also represented to its lenders. The difficulty in obtaining a bond for the full amount was also emphasized in a written declaration by SF Weekly’s chief financial officer, Jed Brunst.
Guardian attorney Ralph Alldredge, speaking to the court via telephone while his co-counsels Richard Hill and Craig Moody were present, reiterated a previous offer to stay enforcement until June 18, which is 30 days after the judgment was entered following the March jury verdict.
But Alldredge said the statements and briefs by the defendants raise serious concerns about whether they’re prepared to cover the full judgment, so the Guardian needs to be able to take steps to ensure that assets are being identified and secured to satisfy the judgment.
“They anticipate post trial motions will result in a reduction of the verdict, so apparently their lenders have been told that,” Alldredge said, adding, “The lenders need to be told the judgment is likely to be the final amount.”
The combination of problems securing a bond in the full amount and the defendant’s optimistic belief that they won’t have to pay the full $15.6 million raise concerns about whether the Guardian is going to get paid, he said.
“That’s a very shaky situation and it implies some risk that the bond may never be issued,” Alldredge said.
Hill also told the court that given the fact that Village Voice Media assets are spread across a number of states, it will be a long and difficult process for the Guardian to recover its judgment if VVM isn’t able to secure a bond and a long delay now would make that even more difficult.
Judge Miller agreed with the Guardian position, granting the stay only until June 18 but allowing the defendants to return to court to ask for more time if they can provide evidence showing how it will result in a bond being issued.
“I am concerned there is a risk that the bond may never be issued, based on the declaration of Mr. Brunst,” Miller said.
The judgment was based on the verdict that SF Weekly has been engaged in illegal predatory pricing going back to the mid 1990s when it was purchased by VVM, selling advertising below the costs needed to support the paper in an effort to drive the Guardian out of business. That’s illegal under California law.
VVM is appealing the verdict, but to do so must guarantee its ability to pay the verdict plus interest that began accruing when the judgment was entered last month. Kerr’s motion also sought to delay enforcement of an injunction Miller issued that bars further below cost pricing by SF Weekly, but that portion of the motion was denied.
Both sides are due in court July 8 at 9 a.m. to argue post trials motions, including one by the defendants to throw out the verdict and order a new trial.

A space colony in Wisconsin

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June 4, 2008

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Every year in late May, several thousand people descend on Madison, Wis., to create an alternate universe. Some want to build a galaxy-size civilization packed with humans and aliens who build massive halo worlds orbiting stars. Others are obsessed with what they’ll do when what remains of humanity is left to survive in the barren landscape left after Earth has been destroyed by nukes, pollution, epidemics, nanotech wipeouts, or some combination of all four. Still others live parts of their lives as if there were a special world for wizards hidden in the folds of our own reality.

They come to Madison for WisCon, a science-fiction convention unlike most I’ve ever attended. Sure, the participants are all interested in the same alien worlds as the thronging crowds that go to the popular Atlanta event Dragon*Con or the media circus known as Comic-Con. But they rarely carry light sabers or argue about continuity errors in Babylon 5. Instead, they carry armloads of books and want to talk politics.

WisCon is the United States’ only feminist sci-fi convention, but since it was founded more than two decades ago, the event has grown to be much more than that. Feminism is still a strong component of the con, and many panels are devoted to the work of women writers or issues like sexism in comic books. But the con is also devoted to progressive politics, antiracism, and the ways speculative literature can change the future. This year there was a terrific panel about the fake multiculturalism of Star Trek and Heroes, as well as a discussion about geopolitical themes in experimental writer Timmel Duchamp’s five-novel, near-future Marq’ssan series.

While most science fiction cons feature things like sneak-preview footage of the next special effects blockbuster or appearances by the cast of Joss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Whedon’s new series Dollhouse, WisCon’s highlights run toward the bookish. We all crammed inside one of the hotel meeting rooms to be part of a tea party thrown by the critically-acclaimed indie SF Web zine Strange Horizons (strangehorizons.com), then later we listened to several lightning readings at a stately beer bash thrown by old school SF book publisher Tor.

One of the highlights of the con was a chance to drink absinthe in a strangely windowless suite with the editors of alternative publisher Small Beer Press, whose authors include the award-winning Kelly Link and Carol Emschwiller. You genuinely imagine yourself on a spaceship in that windowless room — or maybe in some subterranean demon realm — with everybody talking about alternate realities, AIs gone wild, and why Iron Maiden is the best band ever. (What? You don’t think there will be 1980s metal in the demon realm?)

Jim Munroe, Canadian master of DIY publishing and filmmaking, was at WisCon talking about literary zombies and ways that anarchists can learn to organize their time better, while guest of honor Maureen McHugh gave a speech about how interactive online storytelling represents the future of science fiction — and fiction in general. Science fiction erotica writer/publisher Cecilia Tan told everybody about her latest passion: writing Harry Potter fan fiction about the forbidden love between Draco and Snape. Many of today’s most popular writers, like bestseller Naomi Novik, got their start writing fan fiction. Some continue to do it under fake names because they just can’t give it up.

Perhaps the best part of WisCon is getting a chance to hang out with thousands of people who believe that writing and reading books can change the world for the better. Luckily, nobody there is humorless enough to forget that sometimes escapist fantasy is just an escape. WisCon attendees simply haven’t given up hope that tomorrow might be radically better than today. They are passionate about the idea that science fiction and fantasy are the imaginative wing of progressive politics. In Madison, among groups of dreamers, I was forcefully reminded that before we remake the world, we must first model it in our own minds.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who bought way too many books at WisCon and can’t wait to read them all.

Beyond the budget spin

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June 4, 2008

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OPINION Local government is frozen. The mayor’s office and the Board of Supervisors have been engaged in open warfare for months. This week, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that in order to balance San Francisco’s budget, city services and community-based organizations will have to undergo draconian cuts.

In a preemptive move against embarrassing protests, the mayor’s press office did not reveal the location of the annual budget presentation to the news media until late Friday afternoon. Even the supervisors, who will be debating and voting on the budget during the month of June, were left in the dark until then.

While the mayor didn’t blame city workers for the financial crisis, he did suggest that Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents the low-wage, frontline, service-providing city workers, should "help out."

Well, we have. SEIU members stepped up to "help out" in fiscal years 2003–04 and 2004–05 by agreeing to wage freezes and self-funding our pensions. All the recent midyear cuts were in public health agencies and among SEIU-represented nonprofits.

Most recently we stepped up by helping draft and vigorously campaigning to pass Proposition B, which freezes city workers wages for two years and tightens eligibility for retiree health care benefits in exchange for a modest increase in city pension benefits.

The mayor’s budget director repeatedly has said that this is a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Talk about spin.

Moreover, in his June 2 budget presentation, the mayor made no mention of raising revenue as an answer to our fiscal problems. You could almost hear Gov. Schwarzenegger’s voice as Newsom presented a slash-services budget with a "no-new-taxes" slogan waiting in the wings for his next campaign.

Everyone knows it’s expensive to live in San Francisco. Paying city employees a wage that allows them to stay in the community they serve isn’t a budget "problem." It ought to be a basic part of what City Hall does and cares about. And if that means looking at bringing in new sources of money, we should have that conversation.

We believe there are various revenue sources that make more sense to explore than some of these service cuts, including a real estate transfer tax increase for high-level properties.

Fortunately, the mayor’s proposal is just a starting point. Soon we will be proposing specific alternatives.

Toward that end, the San Francisco Human Services Network and Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth have organized a citywide forum on the mayor’s proposed budget cuts. SEIU 1021 is cosponsoring this event. The San Francisco budget and revenue town-hall meeting will be held June 9 from 2-4 p.m. in the San Francisco Main Library’s Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin (at Grove)

Don’t get angry. Get organized.

Robert Haaland

Robert Haaland is a longtime San Francisco activist who works for Local 1021.

Drug deal hurts consumers

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June 4, 2008

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

City Attorney Dennis Herrera made San Francisco the first government entity in the nation to accuse two major players in the pharmaceutical drug industry of conspiring to illegally manipulate the price of prescription drugs when he filed a lawsuit May 20. Connecticut followed Herrera’s lead days later, and filed an almost identical suit making the same charges.

The cases could have far-reaching implications. If Raymond Hartman, an economist and visiting professor at Boalt Hall School of Law who testified in a related case filed by a group of East Coast labor unions two years ago is correct, then consumers, insurers, and Medicaid administrators nationwide have overpaid for prescription drugs by billions of dollars as a result of the price manipulation scheme (see “Big Pharma’s Shadow,” 12/20/06).

To explain the highly complex litigation, consider how goods are usually priced. Take the 99¢, three-ounce bags of chips that are reliably available at the corner store near your house. Cool Ranch Doritos. Chili Cheese Fritos. Sour Cream and Onion Ruffles. It wouldn’t be a true bodega if there wasn’t a rack of them situated near the front door or register.

For as long as anyone can remember, it seems, they’ve cost just 99¢, regardless of the local cost of living, from Richmond, Va. to San Francisco. That’s because the suggested retail price of 99¢ is printed ubiquitously by the manufacturer on the packaging.

So you’d notice if a sticker suddenly appeared, lazily affixed to your bag of Sun Chips, stating a new price: $1.99. The manufacturer didn’t place it there because behind the sticker you can still see the old printed price. And the counter clerk didn’t place it there, because he knows the true suggested retail price is still just 99¢ and the laws of supply and demand never called for a price increase.

Instead, a local company that buys chips from the manufacturer and distributes them to the bodega in your neighborhood put it there. The bodega owner didn’t complain because now it’s possible for him to earn an extra dollar for each bag. In fact, as a result of the new sticker, he’s more likely to take his business back to that particular distribution company over a competitor since that company is willing to artificially inflate the retail cost of a bag of chips on his behalf simply by putting a new price tag on the bag.

Now imagine that the product isn’t a cheap bag of chips but billions of dollars worth of pain-reducing or life-saving pharmaceuticals. And the distributor isn’t a local guy who drives a delivery truck full of boxes of chips but a multinational corporation, headquartered in San Francisco, that’s ranked 18th on the Fortune 500 list, with $93.6 billion in annual revenue and a CEO, John Hammergren, who received compensation in 2007 worth more than $22 million after presiding over the company’s record profits that year.

Imagine, too, that the distributor is powerful enough to slap new price stickers on cartons of drugs around the country, not just at your corner bodega, so you can’t simply elect to shop elsewhere to protest the new prices. Neither can you just stop consuming needed medicines the way you can snack chips.

Herrera’s federal civil suit probably has escaped media attention due to its esoteric nature (not to mention a potential conflict of interest at the San Francisco Chronicle, but we’ll get to that in a minute). It charges that McKesson Corp., along with a tiny drug data publisher based in San Bruno called First DataBank, conspired in an "elaborate scheme" to unfairly mark up the price on more than 400 name-brand prescription drugs. The conspiracy allegedly resulted in the San Francisco Health Plan being forced to make thousands or even millions of dollars in excess payments to cover the cost of such medications.

The SF Health Plan is not the same as Healthy San Francisco, the city’s historic 2006 bid to grant universal health care to the 82,000 adults here who live without insurance. The SF Health Plan extends mental, medical, and dental health coverage to about 50,000 people, including approximately 28,000 children in the city, and offers in-home support workers to the disabled and elderly. The plan is funded through a combination of federal and state dollars known in California as Medi-Cal and elsewhere as Medicaid.

The programs help low-income residents get health care, but its public subsidies are being endangered by a massive state budget deficit. So making sure the SF Health Plan is paying the appropriate price for prescription drugs, a $200 billion industry in the United States, is more important than ever.

McKesson and First DataBank, the lawsuit alleges, placed new stickers on drug packages so that everyone — from private insurers to Medi-Cal to consumers without insurance who simply walk up to a pharmacy window and cover their drug treatments with cash — paid far more than they should have, based on an industry calculation that’s similar to the suggested retail price printed on our analogy of a bag of chips. Herrera says he took on the suit because San Francisco is not alone in overpaying for pharmaceuticals and he saw a chance to force greater reforms in the system.

"We make our decisions based on the facts and the law, and we do our best to protect consumers, taxpayers, and businesses alike," Herrera told the Guardian. "This impacts a lot of things. It’s about protecting consumers from having high drug costs passed on to them. It’s about protecting taxpayer dollars since this is the San Francisco Health Plan, and it’s something that emanates out of a city program. But it’s also about protecting businesses, because a lot of businesses and health plans are the ones footing the bill for increased drug costs."

First DataBank is not listed as a defendant in Herrera’s suit but is described as "an unnamed co-conspirator." The company is a little-known subsidiary of the private, New York–based media conglomerate Hearst Corp., which owns dozens of major publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Esquire, and The Oprah Magazine. Spokespersons for McKesson and First DataBank refused to comment for this story.

As far as revenue is concerned, First DataBank is a bit player in the world of pharmaceuticals. Court records in a related 2006 suit describe its annual pretax income as just $19 million, barely enough to cover the McKesson CEO’s compensation last year.

But the company is nonetheless important to people who rely on prescription drugs. It’s one of the few major companies in the United States that maintains a sophisticated electronic database of information on tens of thousands of prescription drugs. Plus, First DataBank possesses a virtual monopoly on the market because the company merged with its only real competitor, Medi-Span, in 1998. Its database includes numbers, for instance, on what a drug manufacturer like Aventis might charge distributor McKesson for the allergy medicine Allegra, a figure known as the "wholesale acquisition cost."

Because it’s almost impossible to track every transaction between McKesson and retail chain pharmacies that McKesson distributes bulk drugs to, like Rite Aid and CVS Caremark McKesson, it’s First DataBank’s job to survey the distributors and come up with an "average wholesale price."

After you obtain a bottle of Allegra with a co-pay to take care of your stuffy nose, your insurance provider, say, Blue Cross or Kaiser Permanente or the SF Health Plan, refers to First DataBank’s massive catalog of drugs — for which they’ve paid a hefty subscription fee — to make sure the price they’re paying for your allergy medicine is the one properly set by the market.

First DataBank claimed for years that it was surveying multiple drug wholesalers like McKesson to come up with its average published prices and that it was increasing the number of surveys it conducted. But there aren’t that many wholesalers to actually survey because so many of them have merged with one another in recent years. Also, two out of the nation’s three top wholesalers apparently declined to participate in the surveys as a matter of policy.

Troy Kirkpatrick, a spokesperson for Cardinal Health, one of McKesson’s few competitors, said his company doesn’t give out proprietary information to anyone, let alone First DataBank.

"We have a long-standing policy of not providing confidential pricing information to external sources," Kirkpatrick said. "So if we get asked to share that type of information, we decline."

By 2001 it appeared that First Databank wasn’t really surveying several wholesalers or even the two major companies that compete directly with McKesson, according to court records. First DataBank allegedly conspired with McKesson to establish an artificial baseline markup on hundreds of drugs that didn’t accurately represent their true suggested retail price

.

But if the bodega, or in this case, the retail pharmacy, is benefiting from the new stickers, then what’s in it for McKesson?

Herrera’s suit contends that if pharmacies like CVS and Rite Aid saw McKesson pressing the scales for them, they’d return to McKesson with their business instead of its two other major American wholesale competitors, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen.

The three companies aggressively compete with one another for business just like they’re supposed to in good ol’ free-market America. But now it appears that McKesson has found a way to game the system and edge ahead of its two rivals. Indeed, McKesson is narrowly beating them in total revenue according to the Fortune 500 list.

Profit margins from drugstore chains were sagging at the time the alleged scheme between McKesson and First DataBank took off, and chain pharmacies had been pressing manufacturers to help them earn higher profit margins. According to the lawsuit, distributor McKesson came to the rescue.

So the final question, then, is whether the drug stores were enriched by all this.

Longs Drugs last year made more than $5 billion in revenue. About 20 percent of that, or $1 billion, came from the government-subsidized health care programs Medicare and Medicaid, according to company records.

In its most recent annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Longs admits that if insurers began using a different benchmark than the prices published by First DataBank, such as a pricing guide that more accurately reflected market prices, there could be a "material adverse effect on our financial performance."

“Written on Spiders”

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June 3, 2008

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REVIEW From this side of the planet, as many in the American art world see it, Berlin is currently the art world’s utopia. Things are happening there: experimentation and funding can be had, as well as cheap studios, alternative-gallery spaces, and thriving collectives galore. But this scene didn’t just fall from the sky like a space virus and infect the German capital in the past few years. It’s been brewing for some time. One collective, known as a hub that links dozens of contemporary German artists, is Starship. In 1998 it began publishing a self-titled alternative-art magazine with conceptually-themed issues, including images and writing generated by its community. San Francisco gallerist Jessica Silverman befriended Starship founding members Ariane Müller, Martin Ebner, and Hans-Christian Dany five years ago, and Silverman Gallery’s inaugural exhibition in its former Dogpatch location showcased their work.

The collective’s current show at Silverman is a mixed-media gathering that includes drawings, text, sculpture, back issues of Starship’s magazine, and a selection from the group’s poster series titled The Like of it now happens, which focuses on the subjects of excess and sustainability. Judith Hopf’s Singing Frogs — a photo collage of frogs with frogs in their throats — and Klaus Weber’s Ultra Moth provide weirdly funny, surreal social commentary in the tradition of propaganda posters. Because the group chose to not plaster its work around San Francisco — a city not known to embrace guerilla art kindly — they created a faux "outside" for them to exist in. Visitors entering Silverman are confronted by a large, silver, barred cube, like an astral reproduction of the gallery space. Sit on the space’s floor and thumb through the relatively recent Starship issue, The year we went nowhere (2005), and it feels like browsing a travel guide: you might get a sense of these Berliners’ flourishing art boom.

WRITTEN ON SPIDERS Through June 14. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Silverman Gallery, 804 Sutter, SF. (415) 255-9508, www.silverman-gallery.com

Death metal’s best? Arch Enemy to dominate Slim’s

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May 28, 2008

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By Kat Renz

These may be the enlightened days of reinvigorated heavy metal madness, but San Francisco hasn’t hosted a lineup of melodic death metal bands this hefty in a long time. On Thursday, May 29, at Slim’s, Sweden’s ever-fierce Arch Enemy leads the charge of sweeping arpeggios and throaty declarations on the second-to-last stop on their brief North American “Tyranny and Bloodshed” tour. Joining the brutal quintet are three Century Media label mates – compatriots Dark Tranquility, Divine Heresy, and Greece’s death metal offering Firewind. Insert a proper horned salute to Slim’s here for carrying the torch of loud, heavy music of late (Death Angel, Exodus, Slough Feg, and on Friday, May 30, Candlemass and Soilent Green).

Though hardly a household name, Arch Enemy has caught on with metal listeners. Their seventh full-length studio recording, Rise of the Tyrant (Century Media, 2007), debuted last September at no. 84 on the Billboard charts. It could have been higher had the genre’s fans not spent their audio allowance on another new release: Dethklok’s epic cartoon metal album, The Dethalbum, which clocked in at 34,000 copies during its first week out, making it purportedly the best-selling death-metal album to date.

Assembled in 1996 by former Carcass guitarist Michael Amott and ex-Carnage bandmate John Liiva, Arch Enemy’s infant days were especially notable for the technically devastating dual guitar work of brothers Michael and Christopher Amott. In 2001, the group replaced Liiva with a new vocalist, Angela Gossow. Arch Enemy’s since become lazily tagged as that band with the hot blonde Valkyrie who can growl as gutturally as any angry and seasoned death metal dude. Regardless Gossow holds her own in very male-dominated, aggression-fueled scene. (Fellow journalists with metal ambitions take note, there is hope: writing for a German metal mag at the time, Gossow landed the Arch Enemy gig after giving a demo tape to Christopher Amott during an interview.)

Connecticut joins SF in charges against McKesson

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May 28, 2008

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Reuters is reporting that the state of Connecticut today followed San Francisco’s lead in suing the McKesson Corp. over an alleged conspiracy to unfairly manipulate the price of prescription drugs. The Connecticut suit charges that McKesson, a multinational corporation based in San Francisco and ranked 18th on the Fortune 500 list, violated anti-racketeering laws by creating a scheme to artificially increase published figures related to what retail pharmacies pay to obtain prescription drugs from wholesalers like McKesson.

The alleged scheme involved the participation of a little-known company based in San Bruno called First DataBank, a subsidiary of media giant Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle. First DataBank maintains a sophisticated database of prescription drug prices that Medicaid administrators and private insurers use to determine what they’ll pay a pharmacy retailer to cover the cost of your drugs after you’ve made the co-pay.

Because so many prescription drugs exist, First DataBank’s figures are critical for understanding the true cost of pharmaceuticals as they move through market pipelines from the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the corner pharmacy. The suits allege that First DataBank and McKesson conspired to inflate those published prices so that everyone from Medi-Cal to Blue Cross paid far more to pharmacies than appropriate for the drugs. A big part of McKesson’s business comes from chain pharmacies, and if they saw McKesson going to bat for them, the suits claim, they were likelier to maintain those business relationships instead of turning to a McKesson competitor like AmerisourceBergen or Cardinal Health. Yes this stuff sounds sleep-inducing, but there’s a whole lot of money involved if City Attorney Dennis Herrera and others are right about this. Learn more about San Francisco’s lawsuit.

Rich and useless

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May 27, 2008

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Some kinds of artistic ostentation possess a breadth of scale and insularity of purpose that have everything to do with privilege. Matthew Barney is responsible for some enormously pretentious cinematic objects, but even he hasn’t dreamt as self-indulgently big as the mono-monikered Tarsem (birth name: Tarsem Singh) does with The Fall. Shot in 20 countries — from Chile to Fiji to Namibia to Romania to all over his native India, plus plain old Hollywood — it’s perhaps the ultimate "Why? Because I can" movie, sumptuous and useless to equal degrees.

The film’s story (inspired by an obscure 1981 Bulgarian children’s film called Yo ho ho, something the filmmakers haven’t gone out of their way to acknowledge) is a haphazard clothesline on which to hang two hours of pictures. Collected in a coffee-table book, these images might suggest that The Fall is the greatest surreal epic ever — an update of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 magnum opus The Holy Mountain.

Actually watching the thing, however, is a different experience.

You might remember — or might still be trying to forget — Tarsem as the director of 2000’s J-Lo vehicle The Cell, an odious serial killer tale tricked out in the biggest wholesale cribbing of Art History 101 imagery since the more enjoyable Altered States (1980). He also directed numerous TV commercials and music videos (most notably REM’s 1991 "Losing My Religion"), two forms of media that suit his empty pictorial flash. The Fall is like an endless high-concept shoot of extravagant fashions no one could ever really wear, presented against backdrops few could ever visit — unless, like this movie’s director, they’re the kind of global citizen who (according to biographical notes) "lives in London, Italy, Los Angeles, and India."

If The Fall‘s exotica had something, anything — a heart, a point, some philosophical intent — behind it, Tarsem’s movie wouldn’t end up seeming like such monumental upscale baloney. But this director has no feel for pacing, actors, or tone; he wobbles from labored whimsy to maudlin realms before abruptly opting for nasty violence.

Just who is The Fall‘s cold pageant-cum-travelogue for? People who wish they had Tarsem’s life, I guess. Perhaps this is his way of sharing it with the proles. Isn’t that generous.

THE FALL

Opens Fri/30 at Bay Area theaters

www.thefallthemovie.com

Bullet time

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May 27, 2008

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

An utterly complete retrospective of Johnnie To’s films would be too much to ask, really. To’s résumé to date involves nearly 50 features, with at least one release nearly every year since 1986. His work also spans such a gobsmacking array of genres that even an audience of dedicated fans might experience exploding-head syndrome. And genre is the key word here; the man’s a master at it, a trait that has earned him admiration if not fame stateside — probably a good thing, given the cautionary tale of the Hollywoodized John Woo. Though even his most bizarre Chinese New Year farces occasionally pop up at the 4-Star Theatre (and probably nowhere else in the Bay), To’s most internationally acclaimed entries are his action flicks, filled with blazing guns, taciturn antiheroes, and, inevitably, at least one scene in which several characters pause their killin’ to enjoy a hearty meal.

So, sorry, completists — To’s exercises in romance (including 2001’s gloriously offensive Love on a Diet, which makes Eddie Murphy’s fat-suit adventures look subtle), his 1993 supernatural tough-chick classic The Heroic Trio, and his goofy comedies (like 2003’s young-doctor yukfest Help!!!) are not repped in the Pacific Film Archive’s "Hong Kong Nocturne: The Films of Johnnie To." Even the PFA admits, in their notes on the series, this is a "small sampling" of To’s output. But if I had to pick nine To films — culled, as the PFA’s are, from To’s output under his own Milkyway Image banner, created in 1997 — my sampling would likely resemble what’s on tap through June.

The essential To screens first: 1999’s The Mission, as close to perfection as he’s ever come. Spare, gritty, and obsessed with the business of male bonding (a To leitmotif), The Mission is about five gunslingers (all character types: a hairdresser, a barkeep, a pimp, etc.) who come together to protect a mob boss, then close ranks when they’re ordered to off one of their own. To regular Anthony Wong plays the hairdresser — a guy so grim he’s known as "The Ice" — so you know this shit is serious.

The theme of loyalty among assassins who’ve become friends despite themselves is echoed in 2006’s Exiled, which brings back much of the Mission cast. In this modern-day spaghetti western, the gang is charged with killing a former comrade who’s left the organization and settled down with wife and baby. A straightforward execution is discarded in favor of an endlessly complicated scheme that involves a gold heist, double-crossing mob heavies, seedy operating rooms, and more; naturally, slow-motion bullet ballets punctuate every act with gory grace. Wong, as a sad-faced killer caught between doing the right thing for his boss and the right thing for his conscience, is typically top notch.

The more overtly linked Election (2005) and Triad Election (2006) also address the gangster code, taking a darkly realistic look at how Hong Kong gangsters select their leadership — honor takes a back seat to power, and money, of course, means everything. Breaking News (2004) adds eager TV crews to To’s usual cops-‘n’-robbers stew. There’s a lesson learned about not turning police business into a media circus, and yes, it’s a lesson tattooed into Hong Kong streets with many, many bullets.

"Hong Kong Nocturne" may be the PFA’s program title, but not every selection is a dark tale. Throw Down (2004) is a judo comedy. The amusing if overlong Fulltime Killer (2001, codirected with frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai) follows dueling hired guns O (Takashi Sorimachi, stone-faced but Snoopy-obsessed) and Tok (a particularly smirky Andy Lau). To’s meta-intentions are signaled at the start, when Tok voiceovers, "I like watching movies, especially action movies." My general feeling on Fulltime Killer, from a later Tok observation: "Not the best movie, but I like the style." For an even more bizarre Lau performance, 2003’s Running on Karma is recommended; the star plays a psychic bodybuilder turned stripper. A muscle suit that eclipses even Love on a Diet‘s stunt-costume gimmickry is prominently featured.

The series’ local premiere, 2007’s Mad Detective, is unfortunately non-noteworthy. The rubber-faced Lau Ching-wan, a To favorite, stars as the titular detective. He hears voices! The voices are embodied by actors who follow him around! The conceit gets old fast. For a better Lau-To pairing, pick up 1999’s Running Out of Time — not part of "Hong Kong Nocturne" but worthy enough to be. *

"HONG KONG NOCTURNE: THE FILMS OF JOHNNIE TO"

May 29–June 27, check Web site for schedule, $9.50– $13.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, UC Berkeley, Berk

(510) 642-1412, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Human-animal hybrid clones

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May 27, 2008

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION I just love saying that scientists are creating "human-animal hybrid clones" because that single phrase pulls together about 15 nightmares from science fiction and religion all at the same time. Although if you think about it, one fear really should cancel out the other one. I mean, if you’re worried about human cloning, then the fact that these are clones created by sticking human DNA inside cow eggs should be comforting. I mean, it’s not really a human anymore at that point, right?

But the real reason I’m gloating over this piece of completely
ordinary biological weirdness is that last week the British Parliament began the process of legalizing human-animal hybrid embryo cloning. While not explicitly illegal in the United States, the process has been so criticized (including by former president Bill Clinton) that most researchers have stayed away from it. Now, however, this law could make it easy for Brits to advance their medicine far faster than people in the supposedly high-tech and super-advanced United States.

You see, these scary hybrids could become stem cell goldmines. One of the barriers to getting stem cells for research is that they only come from human embryos, and human embryos come from human women. Some of us may be cool with donating our eggs to science, but a lot of us aren’t — and that means scientists don’t have a lot of material to work with if they want to do stem cell research that could do things like reverse organ failure and cure Alzheimer’s.

And that’s where these human-animal hybrids come in. We can already inject DNA into the nucleus of a cow egg and zap it with electricity, thus reprogramming that egg to be human. And we can even get that egg to start dividing as if it were an embryo, creating a bunch of human stem cells. Beyond that, we just aren’t sure. Will these embryos create viable stem cells to treat all those nasty human diseases? Or will they just be duds that act too much like cow cells to be usable by humans? If there’s even a small chance that the former will come to pass, it’s worth investigating — and we’ll have solved the human stem cell shortage problem.

That’s why scientists in the United Kingdom are doing it, and why their government is debating exactly how the process should be regulated. You wouldn’t necessarily know that from the way it’s been covered in the media, where even the normally staid International Herald Tribune began an article about the potential UK law with this sentence: "The British Parliament has voted to allow the creation of human-animal embryos, which some scientists say are vital to find cures for diseases but which critics argue pervert the course of nature." Nice move, throwing in the word "pervert" there.

When the media writes about how scientists might "pervert the course of nature," and the anti-science group Human Genetics Alert is bombarding me and pretty much every other science journalist on the planet with crazed, uniformed screeds about how this law will lead to "designer babies," you start to feel like a huge portion of the population doesn’t know the difference between science and science fiction. Indeed, one of the most anticipated sci-fi horror movies for next year is Splice, which is about a pair of rock star geneticists who create a human-animal hybrid. Of course the hybrid happens to be a deadly, exotic-looking woman with wings and a tail and a super-hot body. Early images released from the production show her naked, with her animal parts looking sexy and dangerous.

The completely impossible "designer baby" in Splice is what most people think will happen when scientists create human-animal hybrid clones. But creating something like the sexy Splice lady is not only beyond the reach of current science, it is also illegal under the proposed UK law. The hybrid clones will only be permitted to develop for about two weeks, which is the time required to create stem cells. After that, they must be destroyed. So the UK law actually makes the nightmare scenario impossible, not possible.

And that’s why I’m psyched about getting my human-animal hybrid clones. *

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who can’t wait to see the world populated with human-elephant-dolphin hybrids.